


Grow As We Go

by dreamerbydawn



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Communication, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Immortal Husbands Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Mentioned Booker | Sebastien le Livre, Not Booker bashing but not friendly either, Personal Growth, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Power of conversation, dealing with the fallout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:27:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26061163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamerbydawn/pseuds/dreamerbydawn
Summary: “I know you don’t hold the same anger at Booker that I do but –“ He begins, when Nicky surprises them both by cutting in with a harsh laugh....“Sometimes your love for me blinds you too much” Nicky admonishes quietly.In other words, Immortality doesn't fix broken hearts and Joe and Nicky are learning to deal with Booker's betrayal.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Mentioned Booker/Accountability
Comments: 33
Kudos: 271





	Grow As We Go

**Author's Note:**

> “We cannot choose ~~for our children~~ whether they live or die. It is a devastating realization, but also liberating. I chose the perilous but essential path that allows me to accept that ~~Nic~~ will decide for himself how—and whether—he will live his life.”
> 
> “Sometimes I am all right. Is this what they call letting go? I have let go, if letting go means I am all right sometimes.” 
> 
> ― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy.

They’ve been walking in silence for close to three hours now. Nicky’s initial jog to catch up with Joe had first slowed down to match the long furious strides of his beloved, and then slowed further the farther they got from their safe house, until it has settled into a steady pace.

Joe has lost enough of his forward momentum by now, and they are continuing to put one foot in front of the other, simply because neither of them wants to stop yet. Not when stopping would mean facing the issues they’re so desperately running from. 

All of it was very reminiscent of that first trek across the desert and away from Jerusalem - from the tense silence to the directionless march forward. So many pleas and questions are swallowed before they can materialize, so much pain and anger and confusion, all of it twisting them up from the inside. 

Nicky hates every minute of it.

But they can’t stop, not until Joe is ready to. And if that means they have to walk until exhaustion has one of them collapsing to the ground, well it’s nothing they haven’t done before. 

So they carry on, even as the sun dips steadily lower, and a faint but familiar scent of the sea begins to waft in the air. It must mean they have walked a good 15 miles now and all the way to the nearest beach. Still, it at least serves to uncoil some of the tension in them the way it always has. Even in the beginning, it was a commonality they had shared, both of them having been born in port cities.

And now that they have a destination again, they pick up their pace forward and when the buildings give way to the open expanse of the shore, it feels like they can breathe again. Without a word, the two of them clamber their way as close to the water as they can, and when the sea salt is spraying in their faces and their pants are dripping at the ankles, they settle in. 

Joe is staring out at the waves and Nicky is staring at him, once again a familiar tableau from centuries ago, and just like it was back then, neither one is content. Joe’s emotions are still stirring up a tempest in his chest and Nicky is still waiting for the cyclone to hit landfall. At least this time they have the assurance of weathering through this storm together. 

Perhaps Joe is thinking similar thoughts, and his mind too has carried him back to their early days. Or perhaps it is because there is no audience here, no one who would need a translation for their old dialects, that their odd mix of Arabic and Genoese slips out of his tongue - albeit with more fluency now than what they had worked with back in the day.

“I know you don’t hold the same anger at Booker that I do but –“ He begins, when Nicky surprises them both by cutting in with a harsh laugh.

It startles Joe into looking at Nicky for the first time in hours. He sees the tension in the strong lines of Nicolo's body that betray the falseness of his composure, and for a moment he sees the past just as clearly. He sees the crusader with shuttered eyes, an inscrutable expression and thoughts Joe could never begin to fathom. But it dissolves in a second, because it is _his_ Nicky who flips a hand gently on his knee, an open invite that Joe is helpless to resist. 

When he reaches out and tangles their fingers together, he’s rewarded instantly with a kiss to his knuckles as an apology for the interruption.

“Sometimes your love for me blinds you too much” Nicky admonishes quietly and it makes Joe turn away, even if the hand held in Nicky’s grip remains where it is.

Nicky is right of course, while Joe is not the kind of fool who will ever underestimate his beloved, or make the mistake of thinking him soft - Never mind that it was impossible to do, not when their first meeting involved Nicky’s long sword being buried in his chest - it's simply a fact that he has grown used to Nicolo's patience holding for longer than his own

In any case, he was no stranger to the anger that rested deep in the wells of Nicky’s heart. And he had often thought that like groundwater, it kept pouring slowly into Nicolo and took forever to dry out; only to be found again if one dug deeper.

Still, as steady as it pulsed, it isn’t like the rage he feels. Nicky isn’t turning every corner and seeing Booker there, isn’t pulling apart every interaction they’ve had to try to see where everything went wrong. For Nicky, one decision hasn’t stained all the memories made through centuries.

“Not like me Nicolo, you are not angry like me. Not so much” Yusuf says, hating to be consumed by something so ugly, but unable to see anything past the betrayal.

“I am plenty angry Yusuf, perhaps even more than you.” The words are plain, honest and for Joe impossible to believe. He's scoffs at the very notion, and cuts a glance Nicolo's way, only to be met with the coldness of steel in blue eyes, with Nicky adding “Every time I see how deeply this continues to hurt you, it fuels my anger some more”

He lets the words sink in and then considers them for a moment, spends a few minutes trying to parse through Nicky's interactions with Sebastian following the situation with Merrick, and realizes there have been none. He had just been too consumed by his own anger to notice the cold shoulder Nicolo had given, the way he had simply shut down. He has made this mistake before, famously that one time Nicky had refused to speak to Andy for a year following the FUBAR situation in Florence, and Joe hadn't noticed for months till Andromache herself had wearily pointed it out.

Ultimately, the realization helps nothing because this was no competition. Knowing they’re both angry does not help anyone.

“Well, at least you’re not the one that broke perfectly good tables or made a scene” Joe’s words are self-deprecating and he even smiles sadly. And if nothing else, it brings life back into Nick'y eyes. Because Nicky is unwilling to let that sentiment stand for even a moment.

Joe’s anger overflowed the same as his love, and Nicky will not tolerate for his beloved to be left feeling like it was unwelcome or undesirable. So what if he always felt too much? Yusuf was the kind of man that would marvel at a flower that’ll droop by sunset with the same exuberance he’d show for a feat of architecture that was older than both of them. He simply never bothered to be sparing with his words or the contents of his heart and Nicky loved that about him. He will not allow anyone to hold his nature against him, not even Yusuf himself.

“No” He says, tone allowing no room for argument “No it was not me that made a scene, but I _am_ the one that argued for a century of exile”

Yusuf merely snorts at that, looks at Nicky almost fondly “We all know that will not last”

This time it was Nicky’s turn to avert his gaze, because that was unfortunately true. It would not last. Andy’s mortality alone would ensure that it didn’t. They could not, _would not_ , deprive her of his company, or make her feel one loss more than she already had to.

But Nicky’s anger, now _that_ would definitely last a century. And sooner or later, he was going to have to figure out how to keep it from causing more harm and tearing them all apart again. Because the sad truth was, in a few decades, he will be the only one still angry.

“What a pair we make” Joe says then, making Nicky laugh in earnest this time. He remembers distinctly the first time he had heard those words, seated on a different shore, in a different century, struggling to muddle through different problems. He is glad that Joe too has been revisiting their beginnings in his mind.

Nicky only has a moment to smile and share in the memories though, before Joe’s face falls and he’s once again turning to look at the sea.

“Is that where it leaves us? Nearly a 1000 years and no lessons learned?”

Nicky blinks, confused as he tries futilely to follow the twisted paths Joe’s mind has led him down, before giving up and frowning with discontent when he asks “what do you mean?”

“Here we are Nicolo, two men, confused and hurting, no better now than we were then. We went to war for our faith, and yet in all this time we have not learned even it’s most basic teachings of forgiveness”

Nicky stares at the love of his life for a long moment, incredulous at the words he was hearing, the absolute nonsense that Joe simply has to know has no basis in the truth, before he simply rolls his eyes and huffs

“Too dramatic even for you habibi” He teases, Joe's penchant for melodrama a constant in all their years. Yusuf looks aghast for all of three seconds, then promptly breaks into a wide smile.

“You dare dismiss my words?” He asks, still grinning. This is a familiar game between them, and Nicky indulges him by fondly demanding “what will you do? Kill me again?”

“Do not make me imagine such vile things oh precious heart of mine, I can no sooner hurt a hair on your head than I can speak without a tongue and I –“

Nicky leans forward to press a kiss to Joe’s lips, the only effective way of shutting up this ridiculous man that he knows, and finds himself tracing the shape of a smile. For one perfect moment, the world falls away again, leaves them be in their own little bubble. And then Joe pulls away.

He doesn’t go far, the distance between them has disappeared and they’re sitting with their thighs pressed together, shoulders brushing and hands still clasped between them.

“I was frustrated that Andromache and Nile have forgiven him but we seem to be unable to catch up” He confesses, easily picking up the previous trail of conversation.

“Nile wasn’t betrayed by a brother she’s loved for over 200 years“ Nicky answers promptly, because that much was obvious “and Andy…”

Here, he hesitates, testing the words against his tongue and not liking the sour taste they left. But Joe was looking at him expectantly and it wasn’t like there was any graceless facet of Nicky he hadn’t already seen, so he speaks.

“Andromache is hurting, deeply. But no longer has the fear to fuel her anger. All the worst things she could dread are in her past now”

The words don’t sound less uncharitable once they’re in the air and they continue to linger unpleasantly between them. Nicky cannot take it back anymore than he can deny their truth. The loss of Quynh would forever be the worst fate Andromache suffered, and beyond that, there were only two fears left for her – suffering the same torment of being trapped for eternity, and being alone after losing more of her family, forced to continue by herself.

Mortality had efficiently stripped her of both, while their stint with Merrick had heightened those very fears in the two of them.

Joe falls silent then, trying to discern whether Nicky’s words actually made as much sense as he wanted them to. Because he did, he wanted desperately for this ugly bitter thing he was harbouring in his chest to be deserving of the shelter it got, for it to not be something misplaced.

“You really think our anger is just?” He finally asks, with a vulnerability that stirs that same rage in Nicky that he was trying so hard to quell.

How dare Sebastian bring someone as wonderful as Yusuf down so low that he doubts himself? When Yusuf was so clearly the best of all of them. There is nothing that Nicky hates more than seeing him so lost.

“Si, I do” He answers steadily. And Joe knows the tone Nicky is using, has heard the forced calm so many times. Usually it has the power to blanket anything and anyone, bring a moment of stillness in the midst of chaos.

As it is though, it only confuses Joe more “I do not understand amore mio, you have done nothing but try to talk me out of it these last three months”

Nicky breathes in sharply at hearing the words. It's quickly followed by a flood of regret at the realization that his efforts to soothe Yusuf have only left his beloved feeling isolated in his anger. As though Nicky was not there with him, but instead stood with Andy and Nile in their readiness to move on from this.

“Ya amar, no. No, Forgive me please.” He pleads, pushing himself fully into Joe’s space, one hand coming up to cradle the face he loved so much, while the other, still holding Joe’s hand is pressed against Joe’s chest “I only did so because it hurts me to see you this way”

Joe shudders in a deep breath, and Nicky feels a stutter in the heartbeat that keeps him alive as surely as it pumps blood into Joe’s veins. It sends a fresh lance of pain through him, the idea that Joe was visibly struggling to hold pieces of himself together, and at least some of that was Nicky’s own fault.

“Please, all of this has gone so deep Yusuf” The tears are stinging his eyes before he knows it, and he begins to openly plead “We will lose Andy soon, little by little or all at once I do not know. Nile will lose her family again, and again in many ways, and one final time after that, and we have to be there for it all.”

The words are unraveling them both, Joe’s tears speeding down his cheeks the same as Nicky’s, and he can’t help but tug at him a little desperately.

“This century is going to be a long one habibi, we need your light” He begs, before correcting " _I_ need your light” 

Joe falls into him all at once, his cheek landing hard on Nicky’s shoulder, before he slides down enough that he can cry into his chest, large heaving sobs that make his whole frame quake. Nicky wraps himself around him, burying his own face in the mess of dark curls, but unlike every other breakdown Joe has had these last few months that Nicky held him through, he makes no attempt to stop from crying himself. 

At some point Joe gets enough sense to wrap his own arms around Nicky, pulling at him desperately like if he tries hard enough, Nicolo will be able to reach under his skin and they can be closer still than how they’re pressed together. He notices that Nicky is rocking them back and forth, or perhaps its just the way his shoulders are heaving, folded over Yusuf as he is.

It occurs to Joe then, why they don’t usually do this. Why when one of them is at a breaking point, the other will hold himself together the way Nicky has been doing these past months. Because it’s ridiculous, and more than a little unhelpful that the sight of Nicky breaking into pieces in his arms, is pushing fresh tears out of Yusuf’s eyes. And the more he cries, the more Nicky feels the pain, that then drives him to some more hysterics, until both of them are caught in a vicious cycle that only exhaustion can break.

It does happen eventually though, when the tears run out and Nicky has been reduced to quiet whimpers and Joe to occasional hiccupping sobs, and they’re sitting alone under a moonlit sky, clinging to each other as desperately as the incoming wave tries to hold on to the land.

“I – Nicolo, I don’t know how – I want to but I don’t know how”

Joe’s words are scratchy, voice low for more reasons that just the toll the breakdown took. Still, he’s doing better than Nicky who can’t seem to get his tongue to cooperate enough to form any words in any language, and instead settles for falling back into the sand, Joe still securely resting on his chest. 

For the rest of the night, They’re just dark shadows lying upon the shore in a tangle of limbs, breathing quietly but not letting a word pass between them. 

Time rarely matters to immortals, but here, lulled only by the sounds of the ocean, Joe can pretend it has stopped altogether. Like maybe for just this pause, Quynh isn’t screaming underwater as she drowns again and Andromache’s silent tears freeze in their descent down her nose and everything stops, so none of them are in pain.

Instead, the cover of the night begins to leave them, making the brief reprieve they’d found with it dissipate. The horizon begins to lighten again. The colours look different now that the sun is going up in the sky, instead of down like when they had first settled upon the beach, and it makes Joe shift.

Nicky lets him go without protest, the two of them allowing the blood to flow through their numbed bodies as they readjust, until they’re each on their backs, still pressed next to each other as they lie facing the lightening sky.

“I’m angry Nicolo” Joe admits, the words a strange juxtaposition to the relief that instantly floods him the moment he speaks them out loud. This is the first time he is simply accepting it without wanting to either wreck something, or to stop feeling this way. This is the first time he has owned it.

Nicky says nothing, merely tilts his head in Joe’s direction with a slight hum and Joe hears it for what it is, a gentle prompt to speak. The words are not easy to find and Joe has several false starts that frustrate him, and Nicky waits patiently through it all. Finally, he decides to go right back to the beginning.

“When did he meet back up with Copley? That set up in Sudan, it takes time to put together. All those details Copley had on his board, it’s not possible to pull all those pieces along so well without someone telling him where to look. Did he spend the whole year we were on vacation making plans on how to kill us? Did he stop to reconsider it all at any point? Or did he feel nothing about selling us all out?”

The words that had initially been halting and slow, begin to gather speed, tripping over each other as it all floods in again. If asked Joe can’t really tell what language he’s speaking in anymore, which questions fall off his tongue in Arabic, which ones in Genoese and Zeneise or even Urdu but he knows Nicky understands the mish-mash of dialects and languages, and so makes no effort to stop it all from tumbling out. 

“All those dead ends with tracking the missing Yazidis, he knew we all needed to be able to do something good. That we’d want to find the missing children. And he set us up. Exposed our secret. Then stood with us and lied to our faces saying he vetted it, and we didn’t question anything. Why would we? He was our brother. Our brother who sold us out”

Nicky’s mind flashes to those shoes that had been left there, in that compound in South Sudan that they’d infiltrated, and it makes him feel a fresh wave of nausea as he tries to think of the kind of man who would have the stomach to put them there, knowing what it would imply. He reaches out and puts a heavy hand on Joe’s thigh, anchoring them both even as his beloved continued.

“Even when we dreamed of Nile, it didn’t make him pause to think of her. He only wanted to keep us on track with Copley. He gave away our safe house and let enemies walk right in and take us. And Merrick. I close my eyes and I see it over and over and over again. I smell the gas and the antiseptic, I see them cutting into you. I hear that gun shot when that monster fired it _in your mouth_ Nicolo – your blood and brains on my hands, I can’t –“

“Sono qui amore mio, sono qui. Siamo qui” Nicky murmurs, willing away images of Yusuf being stabbed and sliced and dissected, out of his own mind. They were both here, they were safe. 

“He did that to us, our own brother” Joe picks up after a few minutes of carefully regulated breathing “And then he blames us for it, like we did not open our hearts and our homes to him. Nicolo I – I cannot stop wondering if he cared for us at all. Andy yes, but would he have come for us if he had known Andy was mortal before he shot her? Or would he have left? Blocked Andromache’s efforts to find us? “

Nicky feels his blood turn to ice as he thinks on it, thinks of how badly it could have gone. Blocking Andy’s efforts would have left them to suffer for longer, yes. But even worse, it would have turned Andromache feral with desperation again. If there was one thing Andromache of Scythia did not take well, it was the loss of her own. And this time, with no immortality to keep her going, she would have died in one suicide mission or another, and they wouldn’t have known. As it was, she could have died from that gunshot and they would not have been at her side, they could have lost her -

“Did he despise us from the start?” Joe’s words drag him back from the dark road his thoughts had taken “I cannot trust anything in the last 200 years because I do not know which ones are lies, which of those memories he resents us for”

Joe pushes himself up then, no longer able to keep the anger contained “ I want to shake him until he tells us why. Tells us what he was thinking and for how long and if it was worth it. I want to ask him how he could do something so cruel, so selfish”

Nicky on the other hand is exhausted, his anger is only leaving him cold; Unlike Joe who looks ready to jump Booker and pummel him to the ground if he could, Nicky does not care about Sebastian Le Livre at this moment. He wants nothing to do with the man just yet - not his apologies or his regrets. Still, he copies Joe’s movement, musters enough energy to sit up at least.

“What will that change?” He asks, knowing he sounds tired and only shrugging at Joe’s incredulous look “His actions came from a place of grief, we know this”

It’s not what Joe wants to hear, the scoff alone tells him he’s ready to charge ahead again. “Misery loves company and so he had to drag us all into it with him. Is that supposed to excuse everything? Since when is being in pain an acceptable reason for inflicting it Nicolo?”

In another time Nicky will perhaps admire how Joe can still sound so impassioned, as it is, he only raises his hands in surrender

“I only meant his answers will not help us any. Nothing he can say will make this better” Nicky is certain of that, has been right from the start. He had not had a word to say to Booker since the lab, not even when he had felt those eyes lingering on him, waiting for a reaction of some sort. Sebastian in his present state, was of no use to himself or any of them.

“I do not ask that you forgive Sebastian now, only that we put him and the anger aside and move on with our lives like we always do” He appeals to Joe, so desperately wanting everyone to stop cutting themselves on the broken pieces of glass that Sebastian had become “Peace will come in its time”

Joe sighs deeply, wishes he has his Nicky’s certainty about these things. Wishes he knew what peace would look like and when these mess of feelings in his chest would stop bubbling up and subside. From where he’s at right now, it feels like they never would, not even in a 100 years. 

“Will it?” He asks Nicky quietly, before confessing “I don’t think I have it in my heart to forgive him at all”

When he carefully glances at Nicky to see how he’s taking the possibility of things never going back to the way they were, he’s surprised to see a fond smile being thrown his way.

“I know you do” He reassures with absolute conviction “you forgave me no?”

The words are a surprise and Joe is protesting them before they’ve even fully registered “That was different”

“Was it?” Nicky’s arching an eyebrow “Was I not someone who you once thought unforgivable? My war took away your home, your family, your whole world. My hands killed you time and time again. I was your enemy in every sense of that word, and you forgave me still”

“It was not betrayal” Joe answers plainly.

Because back then, Nicolo had been a foreigner, an invader, _the other_ and while he had certainly hated him, there was never anything between them to be broken. He did not hate Booker even now, only what he had broken. And that made everything infinitely more difficult. 

“At least I killed you enough times to make myself feel better.” He adds petulantly “Everyone is against me stabbing Booker”

It earns a smile out of Nicky, who asks with complete seriousness “If we go stab him a few times, will you be ready to put this aside?”

Joe chuckles, endeared as always and unable to deny his beloved anything he asks of him. In fact, he’s now completely ready to promise Nicky a home cooked meal and some serenading, anything to keep a smile on his face. 

“No need habibi albi, we can figure out how to clear Booker’s mess another time” The words are a promise, something he’s already leaning forward to seal with a kiss, but Nicky only allows him a peck before pulling away.

“Yusuf” He sounds sad, something that should never occur after Joe has kissed him “We cannot clear it. We didn’t cause it. We can’t control it”

The words sound like a mantra, like Nicky has already repeated this to himself before, and Joe hears the weight of it. Sees that this is why Nicky had demanded an exile. Not only because they needed space to heal and Sebastian had to pay a price, but simply because they weren’t good for each other now.

Joe’s heart pains him at that thought, this was their little brother after all, and while he was angry still, it seemed wrong to stop. As though if Joe stopped being angry, it would mean he stopped caring and then they’d truly be leaving him out in the cold. And would that not damn him more? Nicky seems to read that doubt in him, the question of whether Booker will manage it alone.

“There was a time when I too clung to my own truth and justified everything with it. I know the weight of guilt and I know the road to unlearning things is long and difficult but it is not impossible. Sebastian set himself on this path and he has to walk it alone Joe. Once when we took him in, we offered to walk alongside him freely. Now he has to earn it all back, it is his journey. Whether he finds his way back to himself and to us, whether it takes him a decade or a century or more, that is up to him.” 

Nicky’s journey towards redemption was not the same as Sebastian’s, but it was similar, mixed a little with Joe’s own journey of grief. But where they’d welcomed help, each other’s and later Andromache and Quynh’s too, Sebastian had not. They’d spent too long trying to save a man who never wanted to be saved, and he hadn’t thanked them for it. Now, Sebastian had to find a desire to be saved, and find the humility to ask for help, until then they had to let him go. 

They had to let him go and focus on the family that needed them now – on Andy and Nile, on each other.

“Right now we should take some time away” Joe decides then. It had been entirely too long since he had lavished his love with the attention he deserved, and a little more selfishly, he needed to let Nicky’s love wash over him and cleanse him of everything else “I remember something about a trip to Malta?“

“Si, that was promised” Nicky agrees readily, his smile back in place and tempting Joe to lean forward and kiss him properly.

“And before that, something about a new hoodie?” Nicky keeps his tone innocent, but Joe knows better than to be fooled by it. His Nicolo never failed to collect on favours owed, never mind that it actually hadn’t been Joe’s fault at all that he forgot to pack Nicky’s favourite red hoodie when they left for Marrakesh. He still stands by the fact that Nicky had been wearing it while Joe was packing, and must have left it lying about after. 

For now though, he chooses to give in to temptation and kiss him instead of arguing the point.

**Author's Note:**

> Nicky's dialogue is a modified version of David Sheff's "I didn't cause it, I can't control it, I can't cure it" from Beautiful Boy. (which if you haven't read, I highly recommend)
> 
> Honestly, i'll admit it, this whole fic is heavily inspired by the book and the acceptance that love and family can only help so much, that they do not owe it to you to help when they themselves are hurting because of you. Sometimes the groundwork of building back up is on the person themselves and while therapy helps, it can never and should never, come from someone we love. 
> 
> Which is all to say, I may or may not have an extensive Booker/Therapy character study written up, should I be posting that?


End file.
